the.com/ninth inning
baseball's built-in guillotine — three outs left to matter or vanish.
means the final scheduled inning of a baseball game, when leads evaporate and legends get made.
from baseball settled on nine innings back in 1857, a rule borrowed from the era's obsession with symmetry — nine players, nine innings, nine a tidy number for a sport inventing its own order.
home team edgetrailing home team always bats last
walk offgame ends the instant winning run scores
extra inningsties force sudden-death overtime frames